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Saturday, April 23, 2016

“This Park is for Brown People! This is Not a Park for White People! You are White People”: Racists Wage War on Would-be Gentrifiers in Los Angeles

By Nicholas Stix

“Last November Hopscotch, an experimental opera performed in limousines and different locations around downtown, tried to stage a segment in Hollenbeck Park, near Boyle Avenue. Critics had raved about the production, a brainchild of the Industry, LA’s premier avant garde opera company.

“Protesters in Hollenbeck Park felt otherwise and barracked the performers. ‘I made efforts to speak to a woman who appeared to be in charge but was always ignored and often shouted over,’ recalled Marc Lowenstein, the company’s music director. ‘Some of the things she said were: ‘This park is for brown people’ and ‘This is not a park for white people. You are white people.’”

“Things escalated on the show’s final day when members of the Roosevelt high school band used saxophones, trombones and trumpets to drown out the opera. Performers moved to another side of the bandshell but the high school band followed them, urged on, according to Lowenstein, by activists from a group called Serve the People LA (STPLA).

“‘I asked our own musicians to play along with the high school players, to engage them. The Serve the People members, though, encouraged the high school players to become physically intimidating and they themselves became physically intimidating.’”

“The opera fled. ‘We were all pretty shaken by two things: one, the physical intimidation, and secondly, the use and manipulation of the schoolchildren,’ said Lowenstein. …”

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

In my old neighborhood,where the Polish used to live-not more than 15-20 years ago-and was a safe area to walk...the houses were taken over slowly and then at a geometric rate until it is majority black.If you DRIVE or ride your bike down those streets,you will get an earful from blacks loitering in front of their section 8 houses:"This is our area...whitey get the hell out".Some even run after you or threaten verbally.No,blacks aren t racist are they?

Jerry pdxDahmer wasn't a racist killer, about 1/2 his victims were "of color", the rest were white. He lived in an area where a very large percentage of street hustlers were "of color". About 35% of black serial killers exclusively target white victims yet there has never been a sexually motivated white serial killer who kills only blacks. There have been a few racist white killers who killed blacks by shooting them though. Only a few though, racist black serial killers have been far more common historically. They seem to be increasing also. Let's be careful about perpetuating false myths about "white" serial killers. Racist blacks read this stuff and take it literally, you might be employing sarcasm to make a point but most blacks don't have the capacity to realize it.

Jerry pdxI'm going to have to disagree with this one. I scouted around for more info re this incident and found very little, though there were a few fairly detailed articles from some offbeat sources, the mainstream media appears to be ignoring it entirely. Gentrification is devastating many middle to lower income people in my city, rents are exploding and driving people out of homes they have lived in for years. There are a number of reasons for this, number one of which is population growth, the pdx area has been in the top percentage of growth for decades now, it has been increasing of late as people escape even higher rent and home prices in California. Urban growth boundaries have limited new development so new housing is not being built fast enough to keep pace. People accuse landlords of being greedy and they are right in a way, though owning a home and renting it out has it's expenses also and those are increasing for them also. I thought this would be black people harassing the Hopstotch! troupe, but it's a hispanic neighborhood, they have a legitimate gripe about gentrification driving up rents and home values thereby driving them out of their homes. I watched a few Hopscotch! videos on Youtube and found them to be annoyingly pretentious. White pseudo hipsters with too much time on their hands and a sickening naivete about race and politics. If I saw them performing publicly, I might feel the same way those protesters do, besides, I kind of enjoy when these phony type of hipsters feel threatened by the "brown people" they are usually obsequious to. http://servethepeoplela.org/post/133773472230/the-masses-are-the-real-heroes-while-we

About Me

I am a dissident journalist, whose work has been published in dozens of daily newspapers, magazines, and journals in English, German, and Swedish, under my own name and many pseudonyms. While living in internal exile in New York, where I am whitelisted, I maintain NSU/The Wyatt Earp Journalism Bureau and some eight other blogs (some are distinctive but occasional venues, while others are mirrors), and also write for stout-hearted men such as Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor. Please hit the “Donate” button on your way out. Thanks, in advance.
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